Personal musings on Israel, Jewish matters, history and how they all affect each other

Monday, November 15, 2010

Jews who are Israel's Worst Enemies

Just Journalism has published a valuable analysis of the London Review of Book's take on Israel between 2000-2010: it is stridently against. Guided by a Jewish editor, one of LRB's main tracks is to "balance" Arab writers who detest Israel with Jewish writers who detest it even more, while effectively never allowing mainstream Israelis the opportunity to respond. It's star Jewish writers are Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappe, and Ytizchak Laor (who manages to make even Gideon Levy look moderate).

Someday, long after we're no longer here to see it, in the 22nd or 23rd century, some scholar will write a fine tome about the antisemitism of the early 21st century. The London Review of Books and the Guardian will be given great prominence.

11 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Before I read the Benny Morris peace and become wiser via it I want to "confess" that I've read from late 2000 to March 2006 all of the LRB I could get a hold off.

All of what I may have read during that time I stored under Israel is having a devilishly hard time and it left me totally unprepared for the M&W shock which made me write my first ever reader e-mail to the only German journalist I knew as Israel-friendly. No response, nothing in our media, so I doubted myself a bit that maybe I had been over-reacting.

Then came the Lebanon war and the in several respects sh..ty brown geysir started spitting in an even for me noticeable way.

Until I read the Seaman-interview in the Jerusalem Post I thought the "disproportionate" BS had been around all the time and I just hadn't noticed. Now I know that in the first half of 2006 "it" got not only the M&W-boost but also the invention of proportionality.

T34I read the book Robert Baer wrote after he quit the CIA. In there everything was due to Iran's doing, i.e. Iran was everywhere, but then about a year or so ago I think in an interview he was very much of the Israel must do this and that and if only Israel would kind.

so when he says the Mossad doesn't have much to offer to the Americans that may be so but until I hear it from somebody I trust more I read it with a grain of salt.

The curious thing is that like the pre-WWII anti-semitism so prevalent in Europe (not only there, of course), which allowed Europe to be "softened up" by the Nazi onslaught (from without), just so the current round is softening up Europe for what appears to be imminent destruction (from within and possibly, without).

Alas, the progressive mindset seems to enjoy the hatred and moral indignation more than they mind the necessarily---yes, necessarily!---ensuing vortex.

(Well, welcome to the club, I guess. Besides, the previous time was all of 70-80 years ago, which is certainly time enough to forget---and want to forget....)

Barrymy current book, a History of Venice, shows Europe so often preferring to concentrate on weakening itself that I am beginning to believe it must be in our "genes". (The book doesn't say much about Jews)

I am now in the early 1500s and the most striking examples were Venice in the fourth crusade going after Byzantium thus crippling it for the fight against Muslims. and then in the early 1500s a led by the Pope league against Venice the one indispensable player if one wanted to keep the Turks at bay.

i.e. we Europeans are crazy, deluded, gaga. We wallow in going after our own (and yes Jews were our own by WW2 and hopefully long long before that), it seems to be much more urgent for us than keeping the enemy at bay.

Silke, which of Baer's books did you read?I still have to get back to Melman's Every Spy's a Prince. I took a detour through Shlomo Hillel's book on Operation Babylon.

BtwIsraeli academic, Maya Rosenfeld, wrote a rebuttal to the former UNRWA general counsel Lindsey's critiques, The congressional research service says it was carried on UNRWA's website, although it now appears to have been removed.http://rete-eco.it/attachments/5172_Rejoinder%20to%20Lindsay_jan09.pdfhttp://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RS22967_20090429.pdfFN on p8 of the report "U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians"T34

T34I think wiki-ed S.Y. Agnon. He sounds a lot more interesting than Baer is, who sounded a lot more interesting in his articles than he proved to be in the book (except for Iran is everywhere but no specifics I can remember and how to seduce a source - same way you sell insurance apparently, i.e. make them feel good)